madame bovary

Gustave Flaubert, uses the country setting establish values within his novel, Madame Bovary. In Madame Bovary, the country is a place of balance and chastity as to the city setting which is squalor and immodesty. This is shown through the changes in Emma’s character. The country setting affects the whole novel by
“Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following” (pp.27).” “the brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road…on the right was the one apartment, that was both dining and sitting room…On the other side of the passage was Charles’ consulting-room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an office-chair…then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and pantry…the garden, longer that wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field…the first room was not furnished, but in the second…was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery.” (pp.33-34) “before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.”(pp.35) “it was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from the new racks. The sheepfold was long, the barn was high, with walls smooth as your hand…the courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of the flock of geese was heard near the pond.” (pp. 17) “the flat country stretched as far as the eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violets stains on the vast grey surface, that on the horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.” (pp.17) “far from being bored at first a the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor.” (pp. 36)